Editor profile

Marco Chiappetta

Managing Editor

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com

Recent posts

The Ten Common Myths of I.T.

by Marco Chiappetta - Mon, Sep 04, 2006

The TechZone has an informative article posted today discussing ten common myths in IT. Anyone who works in the field will be able to relate to this article. And I know many of us here at HH have had to deal with some of these very same issues earlier in our careers. "You've heard them... Read more...

Asus P5NSLI: NVIDIA nForce 570 Intel Edition

by Marco Chiappetta - Fri, Sep 01, 2006

Hello HH fans! We just wanted to pop in to let you all know that we've just posted a new article where we evaluate the features and performance of Asus' affordable P5NSLI motherboard, which is based on the nForce 570 SLI Intel Edition chipset. Here's a snip from the article... "We... Read more...

Asus P5NSLI: NVIDIA nForce 570 Intel Edition

by Marco Chiappetta - Fri, Sep 01, 2006

Last month, Intel officially launched their new Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors with much fanfare. Based on the heavily hyped "Conroe" core and utilizing the modern "Core" microarchitecture, as opposed to the NetBurst microarchitecture employed in the Pentium... Read more...

ATI to Release "FireStream"

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Aug 31, 2006

Rys from Beyond3D has been experimenting with ATI's Linux drivers, and based on some findings in the X Server log, he believes ATI may be readying a new line of products -- dubbed "FireStream" -- based on the R580 GPU. The real news is not a new product based on the R580 could be in the works, but that he speculates that... Read more...

Clever Power VGA Booster and CPU Stabilizer

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Aug 31, 2006

A clean, stable supply of power is paramount to a stable system, especially when overclocking, or otherwise tweaking for higher-performance. To that end, a new-name in the enthusiast space has introduced a couple of products designed to filter and smooth the power generated by a system's... Read more...

First Laptop Batteries, Now Maxtor HDDs?

by Marco Chiappetta - Thu, Aug 31, 2006

While you can't draw any conclusions based on a single, isolated instance like this, it is still interesting to see what happened to the underside of a Maxtor hard drive that seemed to have spontaneously combusted. We're talking charbroiled here folks. Actually, now that I look really close, it looks like something... Read more...

New Half-Life 2 Trailer Available

by Marco Chiappetta - Wed, Aug 30, 2006

New Half-Life 2 Trailer Available New footage from the second installment in Valve's first episodic trilogy is now available. In addition to revealing a little more about where the trilogy leads after Freeman's time in City 17, Trailer2 shows off the Cinematic Physics system enabled in the Source Engine by Gray Horsfield and others... Read more...

The Future of Human-Computer Interaction

by Marco Chiappetta - Wed, Aug 30, 2006

There is a great article on-line at acmqueue.com detailing the past, present, and potential future methods by which humans interact with computers. They cover advances made at Xerox's PARC and speculate about future technologies like perceptual interfaces. I don't know about all of you, but give me a good wireless laser-mouse... Read more...

Asetek WaterChill Xternal

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Aug 29, 2006

Hello Everyone. Just in case you're the type that likes to jump right to the news, we wanted to let you all know that we've posted an article where we evaluate the features and performance of Asetek's WaterChill Xternal water-cooling kit. Here's a snip from the article... "Today we have one of the newest external water... Read more...

ATI Launches Radeon Xpress 1250 Chipset

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Aug 29, 2006

ATI Delivers Blazing Fast Integrated Performance for Intel-Based PCs and Laptops New Radeon Xpress 1250 chipset delivers superior performance for 3D games and multimedia applications MARKHAM, ONTARIO - August 29, 2006 - ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX: ATY, NASDAQ: ATYT) is delivering a new mark in excellence for integrated graphics performance... Read more...

Asus P5W64 WS Professional

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Aug 29, 2006

It looks like Asus is just about ready to launch one of the most advanced motherboards to ever grace their product line-up, the P5W64 WS Professional. As you can see, the P5W64 WS Professional is outfitted with four PCI Express x16 slots (with varying electrical connections). Here's what Asus has to say about this motherboard...... Read more...

Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processor 7100 Series Intro

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Aug 29, 2006

New High-End Intel Server Processors Expand Performance Leadership Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor 7100 series Intro Continues 'Summer of Servers' Push SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 29, 2006 - Intel Corporation today unveiled eight new Dual-Core Intel Xeon 7100 series processors designed for... Read more...

Intel VIIV versus AMD Live!

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Aug 29, 2006

Over the last few months, we've all heard a lot about Intel's VIIV and AMD's Live! initiatives for the digital home. But understanding exactly what each specification entails can be a bit confusing. TweakTown has an article posted that explains the differences between VIIV and Live! (hey, that rhymes - think that's a... Read more...

Core 2 Extreme X6800 Review

by Marco Chiappetta - Tue, Aug 29, 2006

GamePC has a review on-line today of Intel's current flagship Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor. As you probably expect by now, the X6800 outperformed every other processor they tested. What's more interesting than the performance results, however, was the overclocking test. GamePC used a water-cooling kit to take a retail X6800 up over... Read more...

Media Encoding Performance: AMD versus Intel